Serpentine
by roulette rouge
Summary: A young Norse woman willingly gives her soul in exchange for her brother's life...only to find that it is not the goddess Eir at all who has answered her desperate prayer - but a demon of mischief instead. Loki-centric.


prologue.

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><p>author's note: i decided to start with a prologue, since i am a brat and i wanted to. i also found this prayer while i was doing research and i really am not sure if it's legitimate, but i thought it would be a good place to start. enjoy! i will come back and fine tune everything later.<p>

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><p>.<p>

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At long last, I must profess my guilt.

It is a great failing, one that I have long concealed from those I love. It would have brought shame to my family. Dishonored the name of my father and those who carried on before him. I could not have done him such evil, not in life when the effects of such confession would have encumbered him until at last he was delivered into his grave...but now that he sleeps peacefully under the weight of the earth, I must be released from the bondage of secrecy:

I am nothing more than a coward.

In life I have caused as much pain as I have been given. I have grieved. I have envied. I have lost much of what I thought safe to call my own and bore the weight of loss with as much grace as I could remember in the madness of grief. From my mother, I learned dignity and strength. My father passed down to me the legacy of his good name. And now that they have gone from this world, I must honor them in death as I have in life – and care for the helpless child they have left behind. No matter what it takes.

I lift my trembling hands from the still-warm corpse of the lamb lain before my knees. Blood glints black in the firelight, finding cracks and divots in the earth and pooling there, and I cannot help the shiver that runs through me as I watch it crawl down the length of my thin, white wrist. The color soaks into the hem of my sleeve and blooms there. She had been my favorite, the runt of the last sturdy litter of white sheep with black masks that my father had reared himself.

The fire begins to shift. Higher it climbs, engulfing dry, hollow boughs of fallen elm trees which grow at the edge of the forest. I had not the strength of my brother to fell the young, strong trees at the heart of the woods, and took only what lay on the ground. The smell of burning rot and green crackled on the black air. Night closed in around me, and the closeness of its veil settled with a chill in the channel of my bones.

I gathered the bowls to me. Blood of the lamb, root of the sacred ash tree, herb of the healer. The sprig of mistletoe has already begun to brown in the clutches of early winter. It is a poor offering…but it is all I have, and I can only hope that Eir will heed the desperation of my plea and in her mercy, take pity on me.

"Eir Healer of the Copper Lancet. In your Hall of Leeches hung with bundles of herbs and roots and flowers. You bound the wounds of Tyr one-handed and Odin speared and sacrificed: Gracious Goddess. Join your breath with brother mine and soothe the fevered flesh of my kin."

My eyes closed, my head lifted to the shadowed heavens, I repeat the hallowed words. The eyes of the stars are upon me, shards of ice embedded into the sky like the flesh of a dark, sleeping giant. A coldness bleeds from it, covers the whole of the world in a shroud like snow. The moon hides from me in shame, her pale round face cloaked behind the shield of cloud which gathers quietly in the east. All the light left to me is the fire I have summoned in the graves of old, forgotten ashes – warm and bright and the color of a rising sun. It washes gold across my white skin, its heat dancing in my blood, and in its glow I feel the stillness of surety spread through me with the strength of warm, skilled fingers.

He is my only kin. All I have left in the world.

I must do what I can to save him.

With renewed confidence, I breathe again into the darkness, and my voice strikes hard like hammer upon shield against the frozen air. "Eir Healer of the Copper Lancet. In your Hall of Leeches hung with bundles of herbs and roots and flowers. You bound the wounds of Tyr one-handed and Odin speared and sacrificed: Gracious Goddess. Join your breath with brother mine and soothe the fevered flesh of my kin."

At last, an answer is given, but the timbre of its herald's voice is much lower than I anticipated.

"Do not fret, child." It slithers through the barrier of the fire between us. "For I am here to deliver you from destruction."

I open my eyes and startle backward, landing hard against the sand sprinkled with tendrils of harsh wild grass. "You are not her. You are not the goddess of healing."

The figure smiles, and though I cannot see its face behind the towering wall of flame, I can hear the curling edges of a simper running like a current through its words. A silhouette of clear, vibrant gold drapes like cloth over the shape of the messenger. Tall, it seems, looming even as it bends toward me under the fair glow of the stars that seem to close about its frame. I feel as though I were pinned beneath the foot of a giant.

"Am I not?" It said. "Did you not cry out for me in your hour of need?"

"I beg of you, gracious Eir, healer of men," I replied, bowing low in reverence to that ominous form. "Show me your face so that I may give thanks to you."

The shadow steps out from behind the firelight – tall and lithe is the figure of her, curving gently at the hips and down into the round, chiseled calves which are bared to my gaze. She wears white and gray and brown furs which swath the graceful column of her neck. Underneath, a tunic of silver and green peeks out from the dull, earth-tones of the pelts.

Her eyes simmer, the color of purest green, and the depth of their hue feels ambiguous and unkind. She holds out her pale hand to me, and with fear I appraise it – every fiber of my being screams against taking it, wrestles and thrashes within as I root myself to the earth.

Everything within me aches to run away.

"Fear me not, I pray." Her voice belies the aura of darkness which ripples from her in crushing waves. A distant roar, like that of the sea, echoes in the hollows of my ears. "I have come to you so that I may save the soul of your brother, but for such magic there is a price many are not so willing to pay. I must ask of you something in return…a thing very precious to you so that the spell of healing will take hold."

"Anything, my lady. Anything you ask will be yours."

The corners of her mouth flick upward.

"Why, only what is most precious to all mortals – I require your soul."


End file.
